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Arenal , Costa Rica : three columns of steam rising from the top of the Arenal Volcano.

Fri, Jun, 10, 16
Posted by : Georges VITTON

Saturday, June 4, many people were surprised to see three columns of steam rising from the top of the Arenal Volcano. These columns of steam are not the product of volcanic activity, but the result of the humidity ascent caused by the barrier of the volcano in the horizontal scrolling of this moisture. In this photo taken the same day to 4:55 pm by Gerardo Carvajal, on the road between La Fortuna and Chachagua, we note that this moisture in his ascension, is channeled through the gullies on the slopes of the volcano crater and exceeds in three different places: from the South (left), the East (in front) and West (back).

Conical Volcán Arenal is the youngest stratovolcano in Costa Rica and one of its most active. The 1670-m-high andesitic volcano towers above the eastern shores of Lake Arenal, which has been enlarged by a hydroelectric project. Arenal lies along a volcanic chain that has migrated to the NW from the late-Pleistocene Los Perdidos lava domes through the Pleistocene-to-Holocene Chato volcano, which contains a 500-m-wide, lake-filled summit crater. The earliest known eruptions of Arenal took place about 7000 years ago, and it was active concurrently with Cerro Chato until the activity of Chato ended about 3500 years ago. Growth of Arenal has been characterized by periodic major explosive eruptions at several-hundred-year intervals and periods of lava effusion that armor the cone. An eruptive period that began with a major explosive eruption in 1968 ended in December 2010; continuous explosive activity accompanied by slow lava effusion and the occasional emission of pyroclastic flows characterized the eruption from vents at the summit and on the upper western flank.